


As You Unfold

by hollycomb



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 19:45:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3581637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything has always been leading toward this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As You Unfold

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the hockey story I still really like, and the title was taken from something my professor said in undergrad, in a play writing class. She was talking about developing a narrative, and she said 'As you _unfold_ your [plot etc etc]', and I always thought I would use that for a title someday. About nine years later, it worked for this fic. Recently I reread it, thought it was still good, and then heard the Jesse Ware song "Say You Love Me" which has a relevant lyric okay I'll stop-- but I still love this pairing.

  
The first time Kari's brothers trust him with the goal, he's eight years old and not wearing a mask or any pads. They play with only their sticks and skates when it's just the four of them against the Ollila brothers from down the street and their massive cousin Daavid. The Lehtonen brothers are losing so badly that they put Kari in the goal as a joke, pretending they don't care. He's the youngest and the smallest, the brother their mother takes on shopping trips for company. Everyone is laughing as Daavid skates across the thickly frozen pond toward Kari, pushing the puck clumsily ahead of him. Kari leans forward and braces himself, waiting. His brothers will tease him mercilessly even if Daavid scores with a slap shot that bounces off the side of Kari's head. He tries to make his face mean, and Daavid must see it, because he's grinning with amusement as he comes to the net.  
  
He's going to shoot for the right corner, and Kari isn't sure how he knows this before Daavid even lifts his stick, but he sees it happening so clearly in his head that when Daavid takes his shot Kari's leg is there to block it. The puck bounces off his knee and leaves behind a horrible bruise that his mother will fret over with a sadness that Kari won't understand. When he shows it to her proudly she will know that she's lost another son, the sensitive one she had hope for, to hockey.  
  
*  
  
Johan makes it all the way to the J20 SuperElit before he's given a chance to goaltend in an official game. He's always been a defenseman, but during a game against Mora IK when he's thirteen, their backup goalie is hurt during play, and he joins their starter, who has been out for months with a groin injury that the other boys are constantly making jokes about, on the bench. They have a third boy who knows the position, but for some reason the coach puts Johan in instead. The team won't make the playoffs and they're losing 5-2, so there's not much at stake. Johan's heart is pounding anyway. He's one of the youngest players on the team, and the others call him _roboten_ because he's so quiet and serious. They're all sniggering as the starter straps skinny, trembling Johan into his goalie's pads during the break. They're too big, and Johan is sweating so much that he's afraid he'll drown inside the elaborate costume.  
  
"There he goes, the future of Leksand," his teammates shout, laughing, when Johan skates out onto the ice. They're bitter about the bad luck they've had during the season and ready to take it out on someone. None of them like Johan, who got half the season's starts as a defenseman despite his age, and who reads Bo Carpelan on the bus.  
  
Johan reaches the goal, feeling heavy and helpless. The game seems so far away, and then suddenly it's all rushing at him, an army of blades and sticks that have come to attack him, and even the boys on his team seem to be threatening him. Johan leans forward, trying to remember all of the things the other boys said to him about tending goal during the break, shouted instructions that contradicted each other. _Stay down, don't blink, try not to think too much, try not to think at all. Try not to think_ is one that Johan has heard before, and he's never managed it.  
  
Mora scores on Johan three times, and the coach takes him out, replacing him with the third stringer and avoiding Johan's eyes. The other boys whack the back of Johan's head and ask him why he didn't listen to what they told him. Johan is hot with embarrassment inside the real goalie's pads, and he spends five minutes silently vowing never to try playing goalie again, then begins making plans to return to the team next year and win the job as starter, just to show everyone. He'll do nothing but practice all summer.  
  
*  
  
Kari has his first kiss during the summer he spends with his grandparents in Karvia. It's his mother's last ditch attempt to separate him from the hive mind of his older brothers, boastful teenagers who come home whenever they like to eat the contents of the refrigerator wholly and without thanks.  
  
Kari is miserable when he first arrives in Karvia, helping his grandfather in the bakery that his grandparents own in the tiny town where his mother grew up, but eventually the peacefulness of life with the old people seeps into him, and he begins to feel different, older himself, and calmer without the constant shouts and taunts of his brothers. He's twelve years old, and his father has warned him that next year he'll be a man. Scouts already attend his junior league games with the _Jokerit_. Away from all of that for the first time in his life, he begins to understand why his mother might have wanted something else for him, though he still resents her efforts and wants to grow up to be just like his brothers, strong and loud and full of confidence.  
  
He makes one friend while he's in Karvia, seemingly the only other boy in town. His name is Christian and he helps at the bakery sometimes -- more often, Kari's grandmother tells him, since Kari arrived. Christian is fourteen and is the only boy Kari has ever met who didn't at least play hockey for fun as a child. He only shrugs when Kari boggles at him for this. Christian likes cars and wants to move to France to compete in Formula 1 races. Kari pretends to listen when Christian talks about engines and famous drivers, and Christian does the same when Kari talks about how no one in his league has ever scored on him after a breakaway.  
  
One day they ride their bikes to the lake and lie in the sun when they get there, yawning up at the sky. Kari isn't used to being quiet and still with a friend, and he tries to start a play fight with Christian like the ones he's constantly having with his brothers. Christian seems confused at first, then laughs and gets the idea, though he isn't very good at fighting and mostly just keeps pinning Kari to the ground. Kari struggles beneath him, cursing him and laughing, and when Christian smiles down at him, Kari knows, like he does before someone tries to score on him, exactly what will happen next. He goes limp when Christian kisses him, soft and dry on the lips, his long eyelashes brushing over Kari's forehead as he moves up to kiss the bridge of Kari's nose. They stare at each other for awhile, and Kari holds his breath until his lungs burn. He lets it out in a loud rush and leans up on his elbows to kiss Christian again, but Christian is already standing up and brushing grass from his trousers, looking disappointed.  
  
"Forget it," Christian says. His face is bright red. "You're just a kid, anyway."  
  
They ride back to town in grim silence, and Christian stops coming by the bakery to stock the shelves and pat Kari's ass as he passes behind him at the counter. Kari sees him only once more that summer, riding past the shop on his bike. After Christian's tenth trip past the shop's windows, Kari walks outside, but when Christian sees him he just rides away and doesn't look back.  
  
*  
  
Johan doesn't kiss a girl until he's sixteen, and he tells himself that he's got nothing to be ashamed of, even when he finds a condom in his younger brother's jeans when he's helping his mother with the washing and doesn't know what it is until he reads the fine print. He's never had a lack of female attention and has been aware of the fact that he's good looking since he was a boy, when his aunts would pinch his cheeks and tell him that he would break girls' hearts when he was older. Johan doesn't want to break anyone's heart, but eventually he gets tired of feeling strange for not having stories to tell like the other boys in the J20. Not that he will tell stories, but he will have them for himself, reasons to not feel so strange.  
  
Her name is Rakel and she's the cashier at the shop where Johan has his skates sharpened. His team has a sharpener on staff, but he doesn't trust the man and prefers to take his skates to the shop where he bought them. Rakel is the owner's niece, a thin girl with long, straight hair and a pretty smile. She has just a bit of a gap between her two front teeth that Johan has always found terribly endearing. When he asks her on a date, though he knows what he looks like and has noticed how girls go pink-cheeked in his presence, he's surprised when she shows her gap-toothed smile and says yes.  
  
They go to a movie together: _Dirty Dancing_ , which Johan finds insufferably horrible to an embarrassing degree. Rakel seems to like it, so he pretends that he does, too. Afterward, they go to a coffee shop and Rakel laughs when Johan buys only a bottle of orange juice and tells her that he never drinks caffeine or alcohol.  
  
"Won't you even have wine at your wedding?" she asks, sounding as if she'll be sad to hear him say no.  
  
"I suppose at my wedding it would be alright," he says, and he's glad when she smiles.  
  
It's snowing when they reach her house, Johan driving his mother's car. Rakel looks over at him in the darkness of the front seat and smiles nervously. Johan is terrified of her in that moment, and he imagines that all boys must feel this way when they are faced with the task of kissing a girl for the first time. He regrets that he hasn't done any research on technique.  
  
"Johan," she says, very softly, as if she might cry. "I've always liked you."  
  
Johan kisses her as if to apologize. It's wet, she tastes of coffee with too much cream, and he feels ridiculous. It's a relief when it's over. She squeezes his hand and gets out of the car. He was planning on walking her to her door, but instead he just waits until he sees her disappear into her house and then squeals away from the curb.  
  
In his bed that night, he stares at the ceiling and thinks about the threshold he's crossed. He's kissed a girl, and it was nothing like the filthy exploits his teammates whisper about with excitement. He's not looking forward to doing it again, and is already worried about seeing Rakel at the shop, about what she'll expect. He resigns himself to having the equipment manager sharpen his skates from now on, and thinks of what his teammates call him, even more often since he taught himself how to tend goal with cool precision: _roboten, robotpojken_. The Robot Boy.  
  
*  
  
Kari loses his virginity just before the season that changes his life. He's seventeen at the start of the 2001 season and still the backup goalie for the _Jokerit_ , though there is already talk of making him the starter. The men on the team like him well enough, but they treat him with a certain distance because of his age. Kari is the youngest, as usual.  
  
One teammate in particular teases him in what's supposed to be a friendly way. His name is Henri and he plays right wing, but he's not a starter, either. He's twenty, and from Helsinki, like Kari. He has a running joke that everybody on the team should get to fuck the goalie after a loss. Kari always pretends to laugh. There are a few guys on the team he wouldn't mind kissing, but he wouldn't want any of them fucking him. He doesn't trust any of them that much.  
  
Kari comes to practice early every day, and sometimes arrives before even the coaches. One afternoon, he's surprised to find Henri in the locker room, because he's usually late rather than early. He smirks at Kari when Kari walks in, and for the first time in his life Kari hates that he knows what will happen next. His last game as the starting goalie was a loss.  
  
He doesn't fight much and doesn't have time to wonder why. When the head coach walks in suddenly and Henri flees, Kari doesn't run, though he's ashamed, afraid of what the coach will think. He buttons his trousers and tries to catch his breath before he turns to face his coach, who has never spoken to him directly outside of the rink. His heart is so wild that he hardly feels like a person anymore, just like a sound, a pulse. His coach stares at him with his dark, bushy eyebrows slanted down over his gray eyes. He looks like he's going to ask who Kari is and what he thinks he's doing in here.  
  
"I knew this would happen," he mutters instead, and then he walks away.  
  
The rest of practice hurts like knives down the back of Kari's legs. Henri doesn't show his face that day, and when he doesn't return for the game the following night there are whispers that he was dismissed from the team. Kari never even looks his coach in the eye to thank him, but he plays like his heart will explode if the _Jokerit_ lose, and he wins the starting position, then the Urpo Ylönen trophy, then the Jari Kurri trophy in the post-season. The Thrashers draft him second overall the following year. He's the highest-drafted European goaltender and the highest drafted Finnish player in NHL history. Before he leaves for America, he has sex with his brother's friend Nils who is known to be bent. Nils kisses him, and wears a condom, and Kari considers it to be his first time.  
  
*  
  
Johan tries and fails to have sex with a woman before he leaves Sweden, and resolves to give up sex and concentrate solely on his career. It isn't until he's with the Vipers in Detroit that he has the opportunity to be with a man. He's a trainer named Brent, five years older than Johan, who has been a bit creative with his post-game massages throughout the season. Johan wonders if he tries it on everyone, and hates Brent for a few weeks, then finds himself thinking of those firm hands moving up his thighs when he's in bed at night and feeling restless, his cock not entirely on board with giving up sex. Brent is always watching him in the dressing room, and when Johan gives him reproachful looks Brent just smiles at if he's encouraged.  
  
It happens at Johan's apartment, on his terms. Brent is submissive and his quiet, but there is a darkness in his eyes that still startles Johan when Brent looks up at him with Johan's cock in his mouth. Johan fucks him hard, as if he knows what he's doing, and Brent seems satisfied afterward. Johan is offended when Brent seems to think that he should be allowed to stay the night. They meet several more times after that, but when Brent starts getting reckless at the arena, licking his lips when Johan walks past and dragging light fingers over Johan's crotch while he's working on him at the training table, Johan gets fed up and ends it.  
  
"What the fuck are you worried about?" Brent asks, glaring at him. "Ruining your career? Wake up, Swiss Miss. You're twenty-five and you're in the IHL. You might as well have fun, because you're not going anywhere."  
  
"I'm not Swiss, idiot," Johan says, but he doesn't attempt to refute any of Brent's other charges. It's true that he's probably going nowhere. Johan wants to hit Brent in the face, but he only presses his lips together and turns away, vowing again to give up on sex.  
  
*  
  
Kari arrives in America alone, but there is a woman at Hartsfield who meets him before he reaches the baggage claim. She works for the team, and she's pretty, charming, very blond. Kari knows they must have sent her hoping that her loveliness would be a comfort. They flew him first class, and the woman has a Thrashers jacket that she drapes around his shoulders as if he's a refugee. Walking through the airport and pretending to understand her English, all he can think is, _I want my mother_ , and it's embarrassing, as if this young woman and everyone who passes can see it on his face.  
  
His family is not wealthy enough to travel regularly, and he's only been out of Finland a few times, on a trip to Spain that he barely remembers and another to Sweden where he managed to contract the flu on the train and spent most of the holiday throwing up in the hotel bathroom. Atlanta is not as intimidating as he feared, at least at first glance, and he chews his thumbnail as he watches the skyscrapers from the sleek black car that was waiting for him and the blond woman. They put him up in the Westin, the tallest building in the city, on the sixty-first floor. He has a suite, and the blond woman gives him her phone number, telling him to call her if he needs absolutely anything.  
  
"Anything," she repeats almost gravely before giving him a flirtatious smile.  
  
When she's gone, Kari calls home. It's three in the morning there, but his oldest brother answers and talks to him for an hour.  
  
"I think my escort from the airport might have been a prostitute," Kari says. His brother snorts.  
  
"What a waste," he says. "They're sending you women and you'll just sit in your room and play video games until you go to the rink."  
  
When he hangs up with his brother, Kari calls the blond woman and asks if she could please bring him a Playstation 2.  
  
*  
  
Johan returns to Sweden after a year split between the Vipers and the Manitoba Moose. He goes back to the same team he played for in the J20 when he was ten years old. Leksands IF, where some people still know to call him _roboten_. He's learned a few American expressions and has one in particular stuck in his head all the time now: _with your tail between your legs_.  
  
He lives with his mother and his brother, who is now balding and unemployed, a drunken washout at twenty-four. Johan has enough money to keep his own place, but it would be small and sad, and his mother needs his help. Johan's father has always been gone, but his brother tells him one night while they're drinking together that their father called when Johan was in America, wondering if his son had become a famous NHL star yet.  
  
"He was looking for money," Emil explains, as if Johan doesn't know that.  
  
Johan has a good year with Leksand, almost fifty starts, and when a scout for the Kentucky Thoroughblades asks him if he'd be interested in returning to the American minor leagues, Johan doesn't hesitate to say yes. His mother drives him to the airport in Falun and Johan promises to send money when her old Volvo barely makes it there.  
  
"I thought to myself when you were born," his mother says, grasping his hand, "as soon as I saw your face, I thought: this one is marked, he'll do great things."  
  
"Every mother thinks that of her children." Johan kisses her hand and opens the door, but she pulls him back.  
  
"No, no," she says. "I had the opposite feeling with your brother. Don't lose faith in yourself, _älskling_."  
  
He kisses his mother's cheek and doesn't tell her that the reason he's returning to America is that he hasn't, not yet.  
  
*  
  
The first person Kari falls in love with is Ilya Kovalchuk. It takes about a week, and not two words from Ilya, who is older than Kari by only six months but who has been with the Thrashers for two years already and conducts himself as if he's been in the NHL for ten. He speaks loudly and constantly and struts about the dressing room as if it's his den. His English isn't good but he doesn't seem to care. Kari watches him with open fascination during practices, and when Ilya deigns to speak to Kari one day, complimenting a save as he skates by, Kari stutters out an inane response in Finnish, feeling as if he's watching Ilya from some other, grayer world that offers no bridges into Ilya's. When Kari returns to his maid-swept hotel suite after practices he stares at the television, which is supposed to help him learn English, and fails to concentrate on the words it blares, instead thinking of Ilya with his dark eyes and jagged laugh. Ilya is always with Dany Heatley, his best friend, but in Kari's hotel room dreams Kari replaces Dany at Ilya's side, boasting with him in the dressing room and disappearing with him after practice, off to drink vodka and eat at expensive restaurants, laughing as they recall the accomplishments of the day.  
  
Two days before Kari is scheduled to join the others who will start the season in Chicago with the Wolves, Dany Heatley gets into a horrible car accident with another teammate, Dan Snyder. Snyder is in a coma when Kari leaves Atlanta for Chicago, and Dany is still in the hospital himself, facing charges of vehicular manslaughter. Kari sees Ilya for only a moment before he leaves practice on his last day in the Thrashers' camp. Ilya passes behind Kari as he's packing up his locker, and Kari watches him go by, his heart heavy at the sight of him. The whole team has been changed by the tragedy, but the quietness in Ilya, who is never without Dany at his side, is the most striking by far. Ilya is pale and glassy-eyed as he goes to his locker to sit with his hands between his knees. Kari wants to comfort him, or at least say goodbye, but it would be absurd. He leaves without saying goodbye to anyone; he might have been a top draft pick, but he is still an untested rookie and no one here will miss him. He takes a last glance back at Ilya's slumped shoulders before pushing out of the dressing room.  
  
Four days later, Snyder dies. Kari hears about it when he arrives at practice, and there is much discussion among Kari's teammates about what will become of Heatley, what the official charges will be, whether or not he might have been drinking the night of the accident. Kari thinks of Ilya and mourns the happy boasting that he won't be doing this season. The world feels darker and meaner, and while Kari does well with the Wolves he keeps mostly to himself, returning to his apartment to shut himself in his room rather than watching TV with his roommate. Alone, he'll hug his pillow and think of Ilya, pretending the soft bundle in his arms is the weakened warrior, beautiful Ilya, who sniffles against Kari's chest and squirms closer.  
  
When Kari rejoins the Thrashers in February, Heatley is back, on probation and ordered to drive a car that cannot exceed seventy miles per hour. He is worn and quiet, and Ilya is still at his side, whispering to him where he once would have shouted. Heatley nods somberly when Ilya speaks, and sometimes even smiles in the sad way of an old man. Kari burns with jealousy, knowing this makes him the worst sort of fool, but he would envy anyone who was whispered to by Ilya. It is only when he allows himself to acknowledge this that he finally realizes that what he feels must be love, a thing he has before only heard about, as horrible as it is wonderful. There is not much that is wonderful about loving someone who barely knows he's alive, but after Kari's first win as a Thrasher, he's congratulated by his teammates on the ice, including Ilya, who smiles warmly and says, _hyvä, hyvä_ , probably the only Finnish word he knows, taught to him by some other teammate. Kari laughs stupidly and turns red behind his mask. It would be alright with him if Ilya never learned another world of Finnish; Kari could listen to Ilya calling him _good_ forever.  
  
*  
  
At thirty-three years old, Johan has never been in love before he meets Kari on the first day of practice in 2006. Kari is twenty-two and looks a bit slow and ridiculous at first glance. He and Johan are introduced by Hartley, who seems as if he doesn't know exactly what to do with the two of them. When he's gone, Kari smiles at Johan with a sort of obliviousness that worries him. The Thrashers were explicit in their intention to use Johan as a backup to their young star, and as Johan nodded through the contract negotiations he was thinking all the time that he would surprise everyone in Atlanta by stealing the starting position away from the kid. Staring at Kari, he feels cheated. This is his competition, a boy with spiked hair and pimples?  
  
"You're coming from the Penguins?" Kari asks, and for some reason the small talk irritates Johan, as if he's someone who needs to be humored rather than immediately brought into the fold.  
  
"Stars," Johan says. "Dallas. I left the Penguins in 2003."  
  
"Oh, sorry."  
  
"No need to apologize."  
  
They stare at each other for a moment, both smiling tightly. Johan wonders if Kari knows that Johan wants his job. He must.  
  
"You're from Stockholm?" Kari says. Johan's insincere smile widens.  
  
"No, Leksand. Much smaller."  
  
"Sorry, I –"  
  
"You're from Helsinki?" Johan guesses. Kari nods. "Then you probably speak some Swedish, hmm?" Johan asks hopefully. So far he's the only Swede on the team, though apparently the Thrashers have at least one promising Swedish prospect who will start the year in the minors. Another kid.  
  
"Oh, no," Kari says, laughing. "Well, maybe I know some things if I hear them, but it's too embarrassing. I wasn't a good student. They made us take English, too, but when I came here I was lost."  
  
"So was I," Johan says. "I still don't like speaking on the phone in English."  
  
"Me either," Kari says, grinning, and that's it, maybe, the first moment when Johan's long subordinated heart starts to crack, because Kari seems suddenly profound when he's smiling hard enough, his gray-blue eyes pinched up.  
  
Johan hasn't been completely alone since he returned to America. He meets men for sex sometimes, but always regrets it. It's never worth the feeling afterward, when he's leaving, or they are, when suddenly it's as if they were both just pretending to be human beings for a short time, to satisfy some basic requirement, two robots who are embarrassed by the sight of each other after their human-shaped parts have shown.  
  
Kari is much better in the goal than Johan expected, though Johan should have known that he would be good based on the certainty with which the management told Johan that he would always be the second choice, a fallback. They have brief conversations during practice; Kari tells Johan about restaurants in Atlanta that are good, and how to take back roads to avoid I-75 during rush hour. When he's back in his sterile apartment Johan sits on the end of his bed and wonders why it feels like he's landed somewhere, finally, like this isn't just another stop along the way.  
  
On road trips, Johan ends up at the miscellaneous table, as he always has on American hockey teams; not Russian, not Canadian, and not a coach, he sits with Kari and whatever other miscellaneous players are up from the minors. If they're in a booth he'll take the seat next to Kari and scowl at whatever he orders. A bacon cheeseburger with french fries seems to be the default.  
  
"Are you on a diet?" Kari asks Johan one night when he asks for his usual salad with grilled chicken. Johan is annoyed by the question, but when he looks up Kari is waiting for an answer so innocently that his annoyance dissipates.  
  
"This is just how I eat," Johan says.  
  
"Always?" Kari asks, stuffing a french fry in his mouth. "Even when you were my age?"  
  
Johan snorts at the reminder that he's ten years older.  
  
"Yes," he says. "Even then."  
  
Kari picks up a french fry and tosses it onto Johan's salad.  
  
"It won't kill you," he says when Johan scowls at him.  
  
"It's not as if I've never eaten one," Johan says. He picks it up with his fork; it's soggy with salad dressing. He's never really cared for fried anything, but when Kari watches him eat the french fry, grinning like Johan is doing a somersault for him, it does taste good, better than he expected. Kari pats Johan's knee under the table as if he's just taken an important step toward improving himself, and that's the first time he makes Johan's stomach drop, something that he confuses with regret over eating junk food.  
  
Sometimes on the road Kari will drink things from the mini bar that Johan would remove from the room if he were Kari's coach, and he'll show up at Johan's door, grinning like he's already told a great joke. He seems to need someone to talk to.  
  
"My grandparents hate the Swedes," he tells Johan one night when he's stretched out on Johan's bed. Johan is across the room, sitting in a chair by the window and pretending to watch a cop show that is muted on television.  
  
"Hmm," he says. "I guess they know how to hold a grudge."  
  
"Oh, yes." Kari sits up and blinks at Johan. "They hate the Russians, too, of course, even worse. Do you speak Russian at all?"  
  
"Only a few things I've learned from my teammates."  
  
"I wish I could speak it. Or understand it, at least."  
  
"Why?" Johan wasn't prepared to feel crushed, but he imagines Kari wanting to desert him to join the Russians at their much rowdier tables, and he is.  
  
"Nothing -- I mean -- I don't know -- have you ever been married?"  
  
"No. Have you?"  
  
Kari laughs and leans back on the pillows, looking down at his hands.  
  
"Ilya's engaged," he says. "She's Russian, of course. She already has a kid by him."  
  
Johan is halfway to understanding something that he doesn't want to know. He gets up and walks over to the bed, offering Kari his hand.  
  
"You should go get some sleep," Johan says when Kari only stares up at him petulantly. "No more little bottles."  
  
"Why do you even let me in?" Kari asks, and Johan has to look away from him for a moment. When he looks back Kari is still waiting for an answer, his eyes narrowed.  
  
"Don't be angry with me," Johan says. He didn't mean for his voice to come out sounding so soft. Kari looks at him with what seems like pity, and suddenly Johan can't stand the sight of him.  
  
"I'm not angry," Kari says, and Johan shrugs, walking to the other side of the room.  
  
"Just go," Johan says. It feels as if something is at stake, something is going to happen, and it's up to him to stop it. "I need rest, even if you don't."  
  
He hears the door open and close and turns to find that Kari has gone. Johan curses and kicks at the chair he was sitting in earlier, then feels guilty. He's always been afraid that there is something dark and massive inside him, and that if he's ever allowed to unleash it he will never stop breaking things.  
  
*  
  
Kari first realizes that Johan wants him after Johan loses to the Islanders 0-6. The team takes a bus to New Jersey afterward, where they have another game in three days. Johan sits up front with his elbow propped on the arm of his seat, pinching his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger and staring out the window. Kari sits with him because he knows no one else will want to get anywhere near him after such a poor performance. Kari is disappointed with Johan himself, but Johan is always the only one who will sit with Kari after a loss like that.  
  
"Three days in New Jersey," Kari says miserably. Johan doesn't turn to look at him, but he releases his lip, which is red and fat from his pinching.  
  
"Doesn't matter," Johan mutters. "I won't have another start for a month."  
  
"We're still in first," Kari says, feeling stupid. Johan nods slowly, and Kari has never seen anyone look so tired. He pats Johan's knee, and Johan looks up at him with such sudden hope that Kari feels like he's been struck. He takes his hand away.  
  
"I should never have tried to play this position," Johan says, very quietly, as if he doesn't want Kari to hear. "All I ever do is go against my instincts."  
  
"Don't be stupid," Kari says. "It's one game."  
  
"I know," Johan says, turning back to the window. He mutters something in Swedish, but Kari can only pick out the word _not_.  
  
They reach their hotel in New Jersey well after midnight, and Kari shuffles to the elevators with the others. He watches Johan push into his room with his eyes on the floor and thinks that he should go to him, but to do what? Johan is always shadowing him, as if Kari is the older man who can teach him something. But what can Kari learn from Johan Hedberg, who is good but just that, his exceptional games more like aberrations than examples of Johan playing at his best? He looked so helpless during the game in New York, and Kari's leg was bouncing on the bench while he watched. It was as if he was watching his friend being executed, standing by and doing nothing.  
  
But Johan is not his friend, not really. The way he looks at Kari, stuffs himself into restaurant booths beside him, waits until the others have cleared away before he hugs Kari to celebrate a win -- he's just another older teammate who sees something small and blond and weak in Kari, just someone who wants to get Kari alone so that he can fuck him. Kari is no longer stupid enough not to know this. He stays in his room and turns his television up so loud that it makes his heart race, until Holik pounds on the wall in complaint.  
  
*  
  
The first time Johan kisses Kari is in the early hours of the second day of 2007. In Canada, Kari gets the win against Ottawa in overtime and they fly to Minnesota directly after the game. Johan pretends to be absorbed in the English translation of _Axel_ while Kari revels in the win with Ilya and the others, drinking Heineken and laughing at Exelby's imitation of Jacques Lemaire. Holik comes over to sit beside Johan and offers his diplomatic smile.  
  
"What are you reading?" he asks.  
  
"My favorite book," Johan says, showing him the cover. "In English, though. I've read it probably ten times in Swedish."  
  
"What's it about?" Holik asks. Johan shrugs.  
  
"It's complicated," he says, marveling at how little progress he's really made: still sitting alone with his book while the others laugh and joke.  
  
"Tell me!" Holik says. He reminds Johan of a boy he knew in school whose parents were missionaries. The boy was a junior missionary, always trying to impose his cheer and satisfaction on everyone else. Johan likes Bobby Holik, of course, everybody does, but he's not always in the mood for him.  
  
"Well, it's about this man, he wants to be a musician," Johan says. "Or, he is a musician, but he's not a very good one. Well, he's good, maybe, but he's not exceptional. It's about his friendship with Sibelius, a famous composer. Do you know him?"  
  
"No, I don't. He's Swedish?"  
  
"No, Finnish. Carpelan, the man who wrote this book, he was Finnish, too, only he wrote in Swedish. My mother used to read his poetry, so." Johan rubs a hand over his face, feeling ridiculous. He needs to shave.  
  
"So what happens?" Holik asks. "Does he kill his friend out of jealousy?"  
  
"No." Johan laughs. "No, it's nothing like that. Not that kind of book. It's a true story, you know, based on real people."  
  
"Real people kill each other sometimes."  
  
"Of course, but, well. It's not that sort of story. It's not about jealousy. This man, he's -- elevated, I guess you would say, by his friendship with the great composer. It makes his own failures less painful, not more."  
  
Holik is nodding, and Johan doubts he's really listening. Johan glances over at the group in the middle of the plane. He's surprised to see Kari looking at him, Ilya's scarf around his neck. Kari smiles a little before turning back to the others.  
  
"You should come out with us when we get to Minnesota," Holik says.  
  
"It's so late," Johan says, though he's already decided that he will.  
  
They go to a streak restaurant that is still crowded at midnight. Johan feels foolish among the others, too old, though Holik is two years older. Johan sits between him and Jim Slater, and when the pitchers of beer arrive he allows Jim to pour him a glass. Kari is across from him with Hossa and Ilya, his cheeks pink with laughter as he tries to keep up with the conversation.  
  
"What, you're actually going to drink with us?" Exelby says when he notices Johan's beer.  
  
"I guess so," Johan says.  
  
"We should get Hedberg drunk," Ilya says, grinning. "I want to know what he'd be like."  
  
"I'm not getting drunk the night before a game," Johan says, the dark, massive thing inside him swelling toward the surface.  
  
Nobody makes the obvious joke: _Why not? You'd be hungover on the bench, not the ice_. Johan finishes his beer quickly and Ilya pours him another, the others making mocking noises of impressed encouragement. Johan looks at Kari, who is staring at him again, as if he's lost in his own thoughts.  
  
They're still at the restaurant at two o'clock in the morning, joined by a group of women who recognized Ilya and Exelby from across the room. Johan excuses himself to go to the toilets, the room swimming a bit as he makes his way through the crowd. Who are these people who are out drinking and eating prime rib and yelling to each other in the earliest hours of a Friday morning? Don't they work? Johan finds the toilets and stumbles inside, feeling deflated. The team is in first and they have a chance at making the playoffs for the first time, but what difference is it to him? He'll watch from the bench, deservedly. Kari is on pace to set records this year.  
  
When he comes out of the toilets Kari is there in the hallway, leaning against the wall and fooling with his mobile. He looks up at Johan as if he was waiting.  
  
"There's more than one," Johan says, confused and pointing back at the toilets with his thumb.  
  
"I'm not --" Kari shrugs and puts his mobile, a fancy thing with a full keyboard, in his pocket. "I was just looking for you. You were stumbling when you got up, I wanted to make sure you were alright."  
  
Johan laughs as if this is ridiculous, though he doesn't feel well at all. He leans onto the wall beside Kari, who watches Johan as if he's his dying grandfather, an old man worthy of pity.  
  
"I can't keep up with you," Johan says. Maybe Kari will think he's talking about drinking. Kari hovers close, chewing his lip.  
  
"This is the first time I've had teammates who like me," Kari says. "Before, I was always the youngest, and --" He stops there and shrugs.  
  
"Congratulations," Johan says, not sure why Kari is telling him this. "I was the youngest on my junior team, once. They called me roboten."  
  
"Robot?"  
  
"Yes, the robot boy."  
  
"Why?" Kari asks. He's taller than Johan but stooped, and he seems nervous. His skin has mostly cleared since the start of the season but he still has one red spot over his left eyebrow, and it makes him look so young.  
  
" _Why_?" Johan snorts. "Can't you tell?"  
  
"Johan." Kari looks down and touches Johan's stomach, then lets his hand fall away. "They just want me to listen to their jokes," he says, and Johan can smell salt and potatoes on his breath, his french fries.  
  
"No, they love you," Johan says. "They must."  
  
Kari laughs a little and looks up to meet Johan's eyes. It's like being pushed over and waiting to be caught, wanting someone to reach out and bear him up before he hits the floor. He's known for some time that he loves Kari, and he's hated himself for it, but suddenly it seems like an instinct worth following.  
  
Johan sways forward and kisses Kari, reaching up to hold his face. Kari exhales with surprise into Johan's mouth, and Johan licks past Kari's salted lips, the charge that moves through him when their tongues meet enough to make his cock stiffen despite the alcohol. Kari sucks in a shuddered breath and pulls back, looking suddenly terrified. He walks away without saying anything, and Johan is left against the wall, wondering why he's not on the floor, because he hasn't been caught but dropped, straight to the ground.  
  
*  
  
The first time Kari shows up at Johan's apartment in the middle of the night, it's been raining for almost two weeks straight and he's barely spoken to Johan in a month, since Johan kissed him in Minnesota. Kari lost the game the next day and spent two hours in the shower in his apartment when they returned to Atlanta, sobbing uncontrollably. He wasn't even sure why: maybe it was Johan, the way he'd swooned in to kiss Kari, as if it was Kari who was doing something to him, not the other way around. Kari was sliced in half by that, part of him wanting to pull Johan against him, the other part running away. He was back at the table with the others before he really knew what was happening, and Johan never returned, just took a taxi home and left his jacket behind.  
  
Johan is bleary-eyed and dressed only in sweatpants when he answers the door. Kari is wet; he's never in his life had an umbrella when he's needed one. He's clutching Johan's jacket close to his chest, trying to keep it out of the rain. Johan just stares at Kari as if he's having a dream and can enjoy the luxury of puzzling over this scenario for as long as he needs to.  
  
"I've had this since Minnesota," Kari says, almost shouting over the rain. He feels guilty even mentioning the name of the state where Johan kissed him. When he holds up the jacket Johan frowns at it like it's a weapon Kari is pointing at him.  
  
"Are you insane?" Johan asks. "It's three o'clock in the morning." The anger in his voice actually startles Kari, as if there might be something truly dangerous behind it, though for some reason it only makes him more determined to be allowed into Johan's apartment.  
  
"I know," Kari says, feeling pathetic. "Can I come in? It's raining."  
  
Johan rolls his eyes and steps away from the door. Since the day that Johan kissed him and Kari ran away, Kari has been able to feel Johan's hatred for him as soon as he gets within a mile of the arena. Being near him on the bench or in the dressing room is agony. Johan is businesslike and cool, speaking to Kari when he must, but Kari isn't fooled. Johan hates him so much for what he did, and it's changed every part of him. His eyes are somebody else's when he's forced to look at Kari, mean and sharp. Kari thinks Johan must love him after all, because no one who didn't could muster up such hatred, the sort that makes the air shimmer like intense heat.  
  
"I like your apartment," Kari says when they're standing in the middle of Johan's sparse living room. Actually, Kari finds the clean order of the place unnerving. He holds the jacket out again, trying to give it to Johan, but he doesn't move to take it.  
  
"What do you want, Kari?" Johan asks, and something about the way he says Kari's name makes Kari want to drop to Johan's feet. Since Johan kissed him he's been thinking about him when he's on his back in bed, jerking himself off in his own messy, cluttered apartment. He had wanted to fall completely into Johan's mouth when they kissed, to dissolve to nothing against him, and that was why he ran. He was afraid of being consumed. Now all he thinks about is how much he wants to feel that way again.  
  
"Before," Kari says, his voice shaking. "At that restaurant --"  
  
"Oh, I don't care! I was drunk."  
  
Kari sighs and puts Johan's jacket on the sofa. The whole room is boiling with Johan's rage. Kari wishes that he could explain, but he can hardly make sense of it to himself. He's spent so much time trying to convince himself that what happened to him when he was seventeen meant nothing that sometimes he almost forgets it entirely, and is as confused as his partners when he suddenly flinches away from them. Not that he's been with many, since he's been too busy dreaming of Ilya for the past two and a half years. He feels almost angry at Ilya when he thinks of it now, though of course it's not his fault.  
  
"I wish I knew how to explain," Kari mutters as Johan stands staring at him, his hands on his hips. He's so attractive that Kari immediately discounted him as a potential love interest as soon as they met, assuming that anyone who looked like Johan would never have had to bother developing a personality. Everything about him has been a surprise: his books on the charter flights, the way he touches his face when he's nervous, the story about being called a robot. Kari has never met anyone less robotic. He's never met anyone like Johan.  
  
"Maybe I could tell you better in Finnish," Kari says.  
  
"Tell me what?" Johan asks.  
  
"Why I -- that night --"  
  
"I know why, alright, Kari? You wouldn't want Ilya to see, yes? To have him find out what you are? What do you think he would say to you if he knew how you felt about him? You think he'd be happy?"  
  
"No, I'm not an idiot!" Kari says, beginning to get angry himself. "I never thought, never --"  
  
"Yes, but you still wouldn't want him to know about you, fine, so you did what you did. And I left, too, I'm sure no one missed me. Maybe you want to pretend to be my friend now so things aren't so uncomfortable, but I'm not willing, so you can just go."  
  
"You don't want to be my friend?" Kari asks, and the patheticness of his own question makes his eyes water with embarrassment.  
  
Johan crosses the room in two quick strides and grabs Kari's arms. He pulls Kari forward until their noses are almost touching, his grip on Kari's biceps tightening.  
  
"You know what I want from you," he says, nearly spitting with anger now. Kari shakes in his grip, unable to speak. He wants to tell Johan everything, to make him again soft and sweet, the Johan who flushes when Kari touches his knee. But he can't tell anyone, especially not Johan, who thinks Kari is such an innocent fool that he was actually holding out hope for Ilya.  
  
"Please," Kari says, and it's all he can manage. He blinks his humiliated tears down his face and is glad for the darkness of the room.  
  
Johan shuts his eyes and lets out his breath in a noisy huff. He puts his face against Kari's, not to kiss him, but just as they do on the ice, after one of them gets a win, the other coming out to smile and bump his head against the winner's helmet. Kari has never experienced any embrace so intense as that simple gesture after a good game, and he's missed Johan's face pressed to his so much. Since the kiss in Minnesota Johan has simply been patting Kari's shoulder before skating away.  
  
"I don't know what's wrong with me," Kari cries, though he does know, of course. Johan touches Kari's face, brushing his thumbs across Kari's cheeks to wipe his face dry.  
  
"There's nothing wrong with you," Johan says, and when Kari hears it from him it seems true. He shuts his eyes and leans forward to blindly find Johan's mouth, moaning helplessly when their lips are just barely pressed together. Johan reaches up to push his fingers into Kari's hair. His bare chest is hot against Kari's shirt, and Kari puts his hands on Johan's back, opening his eyes slowly as the heat of Johan's skin sinks into him.  
  
"Why did you come here?" Johan asks, whispering against Kari's lips. He kisses him once, just softly.  
  
"To kiss you," Kari says.  
  
"Is that all?" Johan asks. He skims his hands down to Kari's shoulders and runs them lightly over Kari's arms, until he comes to Kari's hands. Kari takes Johan's hands in his and pulls him closer, nodding.  
  
"Yes, please," he says, his voice barely working. "Please, that's all."  
  
Johan stares at Kari for a moment with quiet curiosity, and Kari sees a sort of understanding pass over him, his eyes softening at the corners. He kisses Kari's cheeks, then pulls him into his arms, his lips ghosting over Kari's neck. Kari slumps against Johan and lets out his breath, his head on Johan's shoulder. Johan smells so good, and his skin is like heaven against Kari's cheek, like home.  
  
"Come here, _Kärppä_ ," Johan says, leading Kari over to the sofa. Johan sits down with a tired sort of sigh and leans back onto the pillows, smiling. Kari sits beside him, cautious and with a wild heartbeat that almost hurts. Johan looks far too perfect to touch. He puts his right knee against the couch cushions and leaves his left foot on the floor, holding his arms out for Kari.  
  
"You can kiss me all you like," he says.  
  
Kari inches closer, feeling awkward. Johan gathers him in and shifts beneath him, spreading himself like dough. Kari can't breathe, because he's never done anything like this with someone like Johan, with someone he could love. Johan strokes Kari's cheek and Kari nods to himself, because he's being stupid, being slow: he already loves Johan, he loves him so much.  
  
He leans onto Johan to kiss him, stiffly at first, then his bones leave him entirely, and they're molded together, rolling onto their sides, Johan's leg hooking around Kari's hip. Kari's cock is hard, but he still wants this, only this, because he's never had anything like it. Johan is swallowing him up and breathing him back out, remaking him. He keeps stroking Kari's face like he's wanted to touch his cheeks for so long.  
  
Kari says Johan's name, again and again, speaking into Johan's mouth, because he doesn't know what else to say. A thousand useless words in Finnish and English thrum through his mind, and a few even in Swedish, relics from his school days, but nothing comes close to anything that could describe what he's feeling. Johan doesn't speak, either, just makes pained little noises like it's hurting him, too, how he'll never have the words for how good this is.  
  
They're so tangled together that at one point Kari realizes he's kissing the back of his own hand. He laughs at himself and tries to squirm closer, but there's nowhere to go. Johan is fully in Kari's arms, mouthing Kari's neck with mindless enthusiasm, a low moan constant in the back of his throat. Johan is hard, too, Kari can feel it through Johan's sweatpants, against his thigh, and he's so overwhelmed by the desire to slide his hand down between them and rub over the shape of Johan's cock that it's a bit alarming when he realizes that he's already doing it. Johan groans loud enough to wake them both a bit, and they pull back to breathe onto each other's faces. Kari strokes Johan's cock again, watching his face as he moans and pushes against Kari's hand. He's flushed and so warm, his chest almost sticky against Kari's. Johan kisses Kari hard, mumbling something in Swedish into his mouth.  
  
“Translate,” Kari says with a grin, sliding his hand inside the elastic waistband of Johan's sweatpants. He's not wearing any underwear, and when Kari's hand finds the hard heat of his cock they both moan with satisfaction.  
  
“You – should have paid better attention in Swedish class, yeah?” Johan is wet-mouthed and glassy eyed. Kari licks the tip of his nose, laughing and drawing teasing fingertips along the underside of Johan's cock. Johan bucks in Kari's grip and kisses him like a plea.  
  
“Tell me,” Kari says.  
  
“I said,” Johan pants. “I said – oh, God, Kari, _ja_ –I, _ahh_ , said I want you always, like this, just like this. Oh -- fuck, _ah_ \-- it sounds stupid in English.”  
  
“Not stupid,” Kari says. He closes his hand around Johan's cock and fits his mouth over Johan's, swallowing up the sweet little noises Johan makes as he gets closer to coming, growing softer and softer as he tries to hold himself back. Finally he shakes his head as if to tell Kari he can't wait, and thrusts forward into the tight ring of Kari's fingers, his cock swelling in Kari's grip. He shouts Kari's name when he comes, gripping him tightly and burying his face against his shoulder. Kari cradles him, kissing his temple, and every harsh breath Johan takes only make Kari's cock harder. He pushes against Johan's leg as he recovers, and Johan quickly gets the idea, reaching down to finish Kari off in two squeezes. Kari has never come with his face pushed against someone's neck, and Johan's skin is wet with Kari's tears when he finally pulls back.  
  
They lie together limply for awhile, still kissing with lazy determination, Johan's mouth so wet and soft that Kari wonders if he's bruised him. Johan looks perfectly content, bruised lips or not, his eyelids heavy as he strokes through Kari's damp hair.  
  
“Can I stay?” Kari asks, wilting completely against Johan, the last of his energy drained. The rain is still beating against the apartment's windows, and he wants to sleep against the rise and fall of Johan's chest for days.  
  
“Kari.” Johan wraps him in closer, laughing under his breath. “You'd do better to ask me if I'll ever let you leave.”  
  
*  
  
The first time Johan wakes up with Kari in his arms, it's somewhere around five o'clock in the morning and the apartment has gotten cold. Kari's hair is still wet, and he's shivering against Johan's chest. Johan kisses Kari's forehead and wonders if this is a dream. The past month has been hell: he's played only once, and the sight of Kari, once a great source of joy, became his biggest dread, spoiled by what had happened in Minnesota. Now, again, the polarity of everything has flipped, and the long month of hell feels irrelevant, so far away. Kari is asleep despite his shivering, and Johan leans back to look at him. It doesn't matter if Johan is awake or not: this is his dream, damp and achy, his sweatpants slimed with come, and everything in him poised to be delivered or destroyed by Kari when he wakes. He's never felt less like the robot boy who was once unmoved by this kind of closeness.  
  
"Wake up, _Kärppä_ ," Johan says, drawing his fingers across Kari's forehead. He's always thought it's a bit cruel to call Kari a stoat, but he doesn't seem to be as bothered by nicknames as Johan and answers to that one happily. When Kari blinks awake he seems confused for just a moment, then he moans and presses his face to Johan's chest again. Johan is filled to bursting with relief, and he kisses Kari's ear. He smells like rainwater, like everything damp and dark that Johan wants to forever protect him from.  
  
"Are you cold?" Johan asks, practically cooing, and he knows he's being ridiculous, but he's wanted to be made ridiculous by someone for so long, and he was beginning to doubt that it was possible.  
  
Kari kisses Johan in response, then faints back to sleep as if this required the last of his energy. Johan laughs and strokes his neck, waking him again.  
  
"Come on, you'll freeze," Johan says, sitting up. "I've got a real bed in the other room."  
  
He takes Kari back into his bedroom and strips him of his clothes while he stands yawning in the doorway of the attached bathroom. Johan steps out of his sweatpants and turns the shower on, making the water as hot as it will go. Kari is shivering harder as Johan pulls him into the shower with him, and he collapses against Johan when they're under the water. Johan has never been with a man who is both bigger than him and so eager to crumble into his arms. He reaches for the soap and rubs it over Kari's back, which is covered with goosebumps.  
  
"Who're we playing tonight?" Kari asks when he's woken up a bit, his cock beginning to rise as Johan's soapy hands travel over him. Kari rubs at his eyes like a child and Johan thinks of what he said the night before, asking Johan to only kiss him. He hopes it wasn't wrong to do more, but Kari was the one who reached into Johan's pants. He grins, remembering it. Kari is hardly a child. Johan imagines that he never really was, that his childhood was subjugated to his hockey career when he was only eight or nine years old. Johan's was the same, willingly; it was a way to get out of his house. But he thinks it must have been different for someone like Kari, who would have been treated, at least by his coaches, like a precious talent first and a person second.  
  
"The Sabres," Johan says, answering Kari's half-asleep question. "Buffalo."  
  
Kari grins as if the word Buffalo is hilarious. "We'll win," he says.  
  
"If you say so." The Thrashers are still in first place in their division, and Kari has been playing well, though he lost the last two home games. He's seemed distracted.  
  
"What made you decide to come here?" Johan asks. "Last night?"  
  
Kari thinks about this for a moment, his hands on the small of Johan's back.  
  
"I missed you," he says. "And I was wrong, before, what I did in that restaurant. I don't know -- something, when I was young -- something, well, something bad, happened, you know -- I usually only, um. Do things like that, like, you know, kissing, with people I don't really care about."  
  
Kari looks everywhere but at Johan, then finally meets his eyes again. He seems awake now, but still confused.  
  
"Someone broke your heart?" Johan asks, confused himself.  
  
"No, no," Kari says, shaking his head. "This was -- just a stupid thing. No one ever broke my heart." He sounds defensive, and suddenly more cognizant.  
  
"Not Ilya?" Johan asks. Kari shrugs and puts his hand on Johan's chest like he's a surveyor, measuring the landscape.  
  
"Ilya doesn't really know me," Kari says. "He doesn't -- see me -- like you do."  
  
"You're here because I want you and Ilya doesn't?" Johan asks, his heart thudding under Kari's hand. He could barely sleep for the fear of this.  
  
"I'm here because --" Kari pauses, making a pained face as he searches for the right words. Johan wishes he could speak Finnish, or at least understand it. "Because you're the one who I want to see me. You know? I'm glad it's you and not him. I trust you with -- this." Kari looks down at his nakedness and laughs.  
  
"What, you wouldn't trust Ilya so much?" Johan asks, because he needs to hear it out loud. Kari shakes his head, smiling.  
  
"Not like you," he says. "He's not like you."  
  
Johan kisses him, sorry now for the questions, though the answers have cleared every dark thing from him. He feels like some heavy equipment he's been laboring under all his life has been shed, like he's climbed from his metal shell. He's unguarded now, but it feels so good to have Kari's skin against his, nothing between them.  
  
They dry and sink into Johan's bed, which is just as he left it the night before, when he heard pounding on his door and expected anything but Kari, drenched and coming to him like the dream that Kari had taught Johan to have, everything suddenly coming true. He wraps Kari into his arms, and Kari is quickly asleep, soap-scented and spent. Johan watches the rain at the window as the first light of the morning begins to make the gray sky glow from behind the clouds. He wants to stay awake, to think and evaluate and worry, but he falls asleep despite this, breathing against Kari's skin.  
  
He dreams that he's walking down a cold street somewhere back home, his robot appendages returned and his metal gait stiff. He comes upon a boy who is crying, sitting on the curb with his head in his hands. He's wearing hockey equipment, his helmet and stick on the concrete beside him. Johan stands and watches him for awhile, knowing that he's Kari, that someone did break his heart once, and that this is the day when it happened.  
  
"Let me help you," Johan says in his robot voice. He's a boy again, or not quite: a teenager. Kari seems to be about the same age, which doesn't make sense. When Kari was a teenager, Johan was already a robot man. Kari looks up at him and shakes his head, his eyes red and his cheeks wet.  
  
"I don't understand you," he says in Swedish, and Johan isn't sure what language he should speak. He sits beside Kari on the curb, which takes some effort, his shiny robot legs bending awkwardly. When his backside meets the concrete there is a loud, hollow crash that makes Kari jump.  
  
"Don't be frightened," Johan says.  
  
"I'm not," Kari says, his voice soft and his tears still coming. He sniffles and wipes at his face, staring at Johan with curiosity.  
  
"So now you understand me," Johan says. Kari shrugs and puts his head against Johan's metal shoulder.  
  
" _Roboten_ ," Kari says, tucking his arms into his lap as he scoots closer. "It was horrible."  
  
"I know," Johan says, because it was, before Kari, and suddenly he's drifting away from the scene, watching himself and Kari on the sidewalk as he floats backward. He's surprised to see that he's not a robot boy after all, but a normal teenager with a warm body and a beating heart, just as he looked at seventeen, pulling Kari into his arms to cry against his shoulder. Only Kari isn't crying anymore, and Johan somehow sees this more clearly the farther he gets from the scene. Kari is clinging tight and smiling at Johan as if he's come to save him, to carry him along into their far away future.  
  
*

  
The first time Kari spends his off day with Johan is their first day back in Atlanta after a long road trip. It's nearly the end of February and except for two wins, the road trip was disastrous. Kari has begun to feel nervous, afraid that the team's playoff chances will slip away at the very end of the season. Johan makes him nervous, too, because they've been sharing a bed in hotel rooms for the past two weeks and they still haven't had sex.  
  
Kari has been instructed by Hartley to use the off day to pull himself together, so he gets a hair cut in the morning and knocks on Johan's door in the afternoon. Hartley has already told Kari that Johan will have the next start, and Kari is a bit irritated that Hartley thinks Johan has earned this after only one win on the last day of the road trip, but there's still no one he'd rather see in his spare time. He grins sheepishly when Johan opens the door, and Johan pulls him inside to kiss his face with sharp little pecks. Kari laughs, and worries again that their happiness outside of the game will spoil the season somehow.  
  
"Your hair," Johan says, stroking a hand through it before as shuts the door. Little bits of snipped hair fall out, sticking to Johan's hand and landing on Kari's nose.  
  
"Is it bad?" Kari asks, touching the short, prickly hair at the back of his neck.  
  
"No, it's good. Come in, come here."  
  
Johan makes sandwiches on whole wheat bread with no mayo and Kari pretends to enjoy his. He sits at the bar that looks into Johan's little kitchen and Johan stands over the sink while he eats. They're still a bit awkward with each other when they're not in bed, undressed. And even there, Johan is confusing. He seems so timid, and yet like he doesn't want to lie back and be acted upon by Kari. At least Kari hopes he doesn't; he's so ready to be acted upon by Johan that he feels itchy with anticipation every second. Maybe it's why he keeps losing. He grins and thinks of telling Johan that he could save the Thrashers' season if he would just turn Kari onto his stomach and fuck him.  
  
"What?" Johan asks when he sees Kari smile.  
  
"Nothing. What are you doing today?"  
  
"Reading about Tampa Bay."  
  
"For your start tomorrow? Good boy! But listen, I'm going to buy a new car today, I think. You should come."  
  
Johan snorts and shakes his head. He's got sprouts of some type on his sandwich, but he smartly left them off of Kari's.  
  
"You already have two cars," Johan says. "For one person."  
  
"I know, well, I want another one."  
  
"Where do you keep them?" Johan asks, taking Kari's plate to rinse it in the sink.  
  
"I keep the expensive one in a garage. Sometimes I drive it. I'm going to buy a house after the season ends. With three garages for cars. Maybe four."  
  
Johan rolls his eyes and puts the dishes on a rack to dry. Kari can't imagine owning a dish rack -- will he, when he has his house? He gets up and walks into the kitchen to wrap his arms around Johan's waist and lean against his back.  
  
"Come with me," he begs. "You started against Tampa Bay before, you know them well enough."  
  
"I don't want to shop for your car on my day off," Johan says.  
  
"What do you want to do?" Kari asks, dropping his hand down to cup Johan's crotch possessively. Johan laughs.  
  
"That's all I've done for the past two weeks," he says.  
  
"You started the game yesterday."  
  
"Yes, well." Johan turns in Kari's arms and kisses him, sweet and noncommittal, but Kari takes hold of Johan's face and makes the kiss deeper and more serious, until he can feel Johan's cock getting hard. He pulls back and grins.  
  
"You think I'm using you for sex?" Kari asks. He considers this as a real question only after he's asked it. He and Johan don't have a lot in common outside of hockey and the bedroom. They walk from the rink after games, talking about hockey. Kari sucks Johan's cock, swallows his come, Johan jerks Kari off like they're teenagers in the basement of his parents' house, then they talk about hockey until they fall asleep. Maybe Johan wants something more; Kari is constantly afraid that he'll disappoint him.  
  
"We should go out, but not to a store," Johan says, running his hands up underneath Kari's sweatshirt. Kari melts against him and looks over his shoulder at the sliding glass doors that lead out to Johan's neat, clean-swept little balcony.  
  
"It's cold out there," Kari whines, clinging. Maybe Johan wants to go to a museum or a symphony. Kari flipped through Johan's iPod in Calgary and half the songs had no words. Johan has a little bookshelf full of Swedish paperbacks in his living room and there's a picture book about art on the table beside his bed. Kari likes corny American pop songs and doesn't even read the news.  
  
"Cold?" Johan says. "It's barely below freezing! Are you a Finn or aren't you?"  
  
Kari moans and clings harder, making Johan laugh again. Kari thinks that if he can at least keep Johan laughing, he won't get tired of him.  
  
"Alright, _Kärppä_ , we'll stay in," Johan says, leaning back to look at him. "How will we entertain each other, hmm?"  
  
They stumble to Johan's bed, pulling each other's clothes off. Kari hasn't been in Johan's bed since that first time, and the smell of his sheets brings back such powerfully good memories that he wants to sob with unbearable joy when Johan pulls all his blankets up over the two of them. In the darkness of the bed they fumble to remove each other's underwear – Kari in boxer shorts with polka dots and Johan with his usual gray briefs – and Kari is quick to trail his mouth down Johan's heaving chest, his skin so hot against Kari's lips. Kari has never in his life looked forward to sucking someone's cock, but he thinks about it all the time now, when he and Johan are in the dressing room, even when they're on the ice before the game: the taste of him, and the way he moans when he swells in Kari's mouth, his hips just barely twitching as he struggles to keep them still. Kari is so hard by the time Johan comes that it only takes a few seconds in the heat of Johan's mouth for him to lose his willpower and let the first white-hot pinpricks of his orgasm give way to the flood of pleasure that Johan swallows up, making it so much better than any release Kari knew before him, because it's Johan drinking his come, wanting it like Kari wants his. He likes the thought of it as they lie together afterward, that this is something they've not only exchanged but coaxed from each other, and he wonders if it's perverted to get off on the thought of Johan's come in his stomach. Mostly he just wants some part of Johan inside him, all the time.  
  
“Do you remember the first time you had your cock sucked?” Kari mumbles when he's half asleep, as if it's something that can be forgotten.  
  
“Yeah. It was a trainer for the Vipers, in Detroit, a horrible man. I hated him. Eventually.”  
  
“I hated the first guy who sucked mine, too!” Kari says cheerfully, pleased by this. “He was my brother's friend, and he kept bothering me and finally I just let him do it, and he thought I was straight so he had a porno movie with two girls playing while he did it.”  
  
Johan laughs hard, shaking with it, and Kari throws the blankets away so he can see Johan's face, because he looks so perfect when he laughs, more even than usual.  
  
“What about the first time you had sex?” Kari asks, his heart pounding with the question. Johan shakes his head and wipes tears of laughter from his eyes.  
  
“Awful,” he says. “I don't even want to talk about it.”  
  
Kari loves him so much for this, and he kisses him deeply, the taste of his come and Johan's mixing on their tongues. He's never wanted any of this until Johan: the sour taste of come, the long afternoons laughing about the past while they're pressed together in bed, naked and sweating, and what he hasn't had from Johan yet, too. He wants Johan inside him, but he can't ask for it out loud, because he wants Johan to want it even more that he does, to be unable to wait any longer, and also because he's afraid. Sometimes, with others, a particular angle or noise will take him right back to seventeen, making his blood cold and his muscles stiff with terror that passes quickly but leaves behind a lingering melancholy that ruins everything. Kari has to believe that this won't happen with Johan.  
  
“What would you do if I was traded?” Kari asks, because he's been thinking about what he would do if Johan was, which is much more likely. He would pull his hair out with grief, forget how to skate, weep openly and be delirious with utter agony for the rest of his life. It's so wonderful to be in love this way that it makes his toes curl, imagining how much it would hurt to lose it.  
  
“I would die,” Johan says, and Kari laughs, but Johan's face is sad and serious. He puts his hand on Kari's cheek and strokes his thumb along the line of his jaw.  
  
“You wouldn't,” Kari says. “You'd find another young fool to carry to your bed.” He knows this isn't true, and it's no fun to tease Johan, because he looks like he might cry at the accusation.  
  
“Kari,” Johan says. “You don't understand. I have never – before you. Nothing like this. Ever.”  
  
“I know,” Kari says, because he feels as if he's waited all his life for Johan, too. Poor Johan, who had to wait ten years longer than Kari.  
  
*  
  
The first time Johan has sex with Kari is the night after the last game of the regular season, home in Atlanta, in Kari's 25th floor apartment with all the curtains open. The Thrashers are going to the playoffs, they lost only four times in all of March, Kari won the last game in a shootout and Johan won the game the night before. There is no discussion: they come through the door, Kari kisses Johan hard enough to bang him back against the wall in the foyer, and Johan knows it will finally, finally happen tonight.  
  
He's not sure why they've waited, but as they fling their clothes away on the way to Kari's bedroom, the floor of which is already covered with crumpled clothes, it feels profound, as if they've waited for their wedding night. Johan laughs into Kari's mouth at the thought, and Kari doesn't pause to ask him what's funny. He bounces onto the bed, pulling Johan with him, and when Johan reaches for Kari's cock it's already so hard.  
  
"Please, _Jo-Jo_ ," Kari says when Johan strokes him, and Johan knows that he doesn't want to only be stroked. Johan has been careful with Kari, maybe too careful, but before he's always plunged right into sex and then walked away, and this is something else, something that should be handled with care. Tonight he feels reckless and too hot-blooded, every nerve pulsing after the thrill of that last win, watching Kari play with such cool decisiveness during the shootout, and the celebration afterward: Johan even hugged Ilya like a brother. He reminds himself, as Kari fumbles for some fancy lubricant on his bedside table, that he'll have to stay calm, and be gentle. He's not sure if he can; wanting Kari has become like air, a thing that he lives and breathes every moment.  
  
"Are you sure?" Johan asks as he slicks himself, Kari spread out beneath him shamelessly, his hands on his ankles. They're both blushing deeply, though they've become so close that Johan can't remember the last night when he didn't fall asleep with Kari wrapped into his arms. But there has always been this barrier, still uncrossed, a thing remaining between them.  
  
"Sure of what, _Jo-Jo_?" Kari asks with impatience, huffing his words. "I need you in me, please please, _olkaa hyvä_ , oh, fuck, you don't have a word for please, do you?"  
  
"Were you going to impress me by saying it?" Johan asks with a smile, settling between Kari's legs. Kari nods madly, his eyelids fluttering when Johan begins to push inside him.  
  
"Yeah, _oh_ \--" Kari moans, pulling Johan in deeper, his eyes pinched shut as if he can't bear to watch. Johan opens his mouth to ask if this is okay, if it's good, but he can't make his voice work, not even to say Kari's name. Every functioning part of him is overcome by the feeling of being inside Kari, who is incredibly tight and so hot, squeezing Johan in slow pulls as he slides in deeper.  
  
Kari is still and quiet beneath him, blond eyelashes fluttering. Johan leans down to kiss his neck, pushing himself in to the root in the process. They both groan with the sensation, and Johan leans up on shaking arms to look down at Kari.  
  
"You're alright, _Kärppä_?" Johan asks, the throb of his cock reverberating throughout his entire body. Kari opens his eyes just a bit, then wider.  
  
"Johan," Kari says, weak and pinched as if he'll cry, and Johan wonders if he should withdraw, if he's done something wrong. Perhaps he's been doing something wrong all the time and the others, who mattered so little, simply didn't tell him.  
  
"What, _älskling_? What's wrong?"  
  
"Nothing," Kari says. " _Minä rakastan sinua_."  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Please, please," Kari whispers, pulling Johan down to him. He shifts his hips beneath Johan's, prompting him to move. Johan does as directed, kissing Kari's neck when he pushes down into him, moaning when he pulls back. It almost hurts to go so slow, and he doesn't know what he's afraid of, especially with Kari whimpering in frustration when Johan ignores Kari's hands on his hips, pulling at him impatiently.  
  
"What do you want, _Kärppä_?" Johan asks breathlessly, though he knows. Kari kisses him hard in answer, whining for it with sharp little moans that thrill all the way down Johan's spine. Johan's cock already feels heavy and full, and he doesn't want to come so soon. He sits back on his knees and runs his fingers down Kari's chest. He's so pale and pretty and Johan wishes he'd never had to live a day of his life without him.  
  
"Please," Kari says again, tightening himself up to squeeze Johan's cock. Johan gasps and lets his eyes fall shut, then opens them slowly, letting out his breath.  
  
"Okay," he says, taking hold of Kari's hips. Kari locks his legs around Johan's back and presses his lips together, nodding, still begging with his eyes.  
  
Johan spreads his legs apart and thrusts into Kari, whose head flops back onto the mattress as he arches into it, saying _yes_ in three different languages, none of them pinging against Johan's cock so hard as the Swedish, _ja_. He's cursing mostly in Finnish, _saatana, vittu, voi hyvä_ , and Johan is grateful that most of the Finnish words he knows are curses, though he would understand well enough without being able to translate. He comes when Kari grabs his own cock to pump it, something he's been wanting to see but too embarrassed to ask for. Kari follows him, coming while Johan leans over him to pant through the last waves of his own orgasm.  
  
They lie across the middle of the bed when they're through, kissing gracelessly, both of them so tired after the game and the celebration, and now this. Johan can't stop running his hands through Kari's hair, and Kari has one arm locked around Johan's back, his other hand curled under his chin. Johan takes Kari's hand and kisses his knuckles.  
  
"I love every part of you, every inch," Johan says, in Swedish. Kari smiles at him sleepily.  
  
"What did you say?" he asks, his voice thick with exhaustion.  
  
"You're perfect," Johan says in English, leaving out the part about loving him, because Kari might be the sort who doesn't want to hear it out loud. He likes fast cars and loud Russians and maybe he's too young to understand why some people need to hear such things.  
  
Kari laughs at the idea that he's perfect and pulls the comforter up over his shoulder, draping it over Johan as well.  
  
"Next week we'll be in the playoffs," Johan says.  
  
"Shut up, _Jo-Jo_ ," Kari says. He grins and kisses Johan until they're both out of breath again. "Don't talk about work."  
  
"Fine, okay. What should I talk about then? Or do you just want to sleep?"  
  
"Tell me when you first wanted to kiss me," Kari says, still smiling wickedly, the comforter pulled up to his cheek. "Was it the night that you did? Or before?"  
  
"I wanted to kiss you when I was sixteen," Johan says, and Kari laughs.  
  
"Before you'd met me? You heard about six-year-old Kari from Finland who was a good kisser?"  
  
"I just mean that I wanted to kiss someone like you. I don't think I knew it yet. I didn't think about it, but there was a big hole inside me, wanting something. I didn't know what it was until I found you."  
  
"You found me, hmm? And what would have become of you and your hole if you hadn't?" Kari asks, still laughing, and Johan pinches his side, annoyed with his joking. Kari only laughs harder and licks Johan's neck.  
  
"Will you laugh about me with the love of your life someday?" Johan asks, his spirits sinking quickly. Trusting his heart to an over-sized boy with spiked hair, what did he expect?  
  
"You are the love of my life," Kari says, his teasing grin giving way to a timid smile. "I told you so."  
  
"Eh?"  
  
"Before. Don't you know _love_ in Finnish? I learned it in Swedish. In case, you know. But I told you, so don't look so frightened. _Minä rakastan sinua_. I love you. I do, _Jo-Jo_ , more than anything. You're the only one who does everything right."  
  
"If you know the word in Swedish, then you --"  
  
"Yes, I heard," Kari says. He scoots down to put his head against Johan's chest and shuts his eyes, his ear against Johan's heartbeat. "Why do you think I'm telling you my secret?"  
  
Johan kisses the top of Kari's head and tucks his arm around Kari's back. Behind them, through the floor to ceiling window, the city twinkles obliviously, happier for what they've done in the arena all year long. Johan had hoped all through his childhood that someday he would be good enough for the NHL, and that he would find his happiness in America. Did he really think it would be with someone like Kari? Yes, he must have. He can't imagine now who else could have saved him, can't even begin to picture any other shape that would fit the once empty place where Kari now sleeps against him.  
  
*  
  
Kari meets Johan's mother and brother for the first time when they arrive four days later, the day before the playoffs start. Hartley keeps the Thrashers at practice until seven o'clock, then instructs them to get some rest, eat well, and avoid alcohol. Kari's entire family is in town for the occasion, his parents and all three brothers, and he invites Johan's family to eat with them, though he realizes that it's probably a bad idea.  
  
They go to Chops, a party of nine at a big, round table at the back of the restaurant. Kari's brothers are embarrassingly loud, and Johan's mother only smiles silently, looking nervous. Kari's father speaks some Swedish, and he attempts to make conversation with Johan's brother, who is drinking heavily. Johan seems dazed and glances across the table to give Kari pitiful looks that make Kari want to pat his knee, but he can't reach it.  
  
At the end of the night, there are awkward goodbyes in the parking lot. Kari's family is staying in a hotel, but Johan's is staying at his apartment, so they won't be able to sleep together for the first time in months. They hug goodbye quickly and Johan holds Kari's gaze for a moment before he returns to his family. Kari is dreamy and distracted as he drives his family back to their hotel, his brothers smacking his shoulder and asking him why he's ignoring their questions. He's thinking of Johan, alone in bed, on his back with his hands folded over his chest.  
  
"Leave Kari alone, he's nervous about his game," Kari's mother shouts into the backseat, and Kari's brothers launch into their usual lamenting about how on earth nervous little Kari ended up a professional and not them.  
  
The first game goes badly, a 4-3 loss, and the players linger in the dressing room afterward, everyone talking about what went wrong and making promises about the second game. Kari takes the loss hard but tries not to let it show, because the others are optimistic. Johan speaks with him for a long time after the game, his arm around Kari's shoulders and his voice low in Kari's ear. He looks like a proper mentor, someone who has been to the playoffs before and can offer Kari advice, which is what he does, also calling him _älskling_ very quietly and rubbing his thumb across Kari's shoulder while the press is distracted by Ilya. At the end of the night they go home separately, and Kari wraps one of his pillows into his arms, feeling pathetic.  
  
At practice the next day, Hartley informs Kari that Johan will start game two. Kari is stoic with Hartley and so furious as he skates away that he can barely contain a primal scream of frustration. One loss, and he's already lost the chance to redeem himself, after all that he's done for this team? Hartley had spouted some shit about Johan being more accustomed to the pressure, and when Johan skates over to Kari he blanches at the look on Kari's face.  
  
"What's wrong?" Johan asks. Kari hates the sound of his voice in the moment, even as he wants to crawl into Johan's arms and have Johan stroke him and twitter with sympathy while he airs his grievances.  
  
"He hasn't told you?" Kari says. "He's starting you tomorrow."  
  
"Yes, he told me." Johan frowns. "You're upset?"  
  
"Are you joking? I can't believe this shit -- not that I think, you know. But -- oh, fuck, never mind. Good luck."  
  
Johan says nothing, and won't look at him, his jaw set tightly. Irritated by his censure, Kari skates off toward Ilya and Holik, who are muttering together near the bench.  
  
"Hedberg is starting tomorrow," Kari says, ready to receive their shared outrage. Calling Johan 'Hedberg' is like stabbing himself in the heart, but he's so angry that he doesn't care.  
  
"Okay," Ilya says, nodding as if he anticipated this. Holik tilts his head like Kari is a zoo animal who is doing something amusing.  
  
"Are you angry?" Holik asks, as if he will pity Kari his pettiness if he says yes. Kari makes a face like Holik is being ridiculous.  
  
"No," he says. "A little surprised, maybe."  
  
"Johan has been to the playoffs before," Ilya says, and Kari is too incensed to respond. He skates away, and doesn't speak to anyone but the coaches for the remainder of practice.  
  
" _Kärppä_ is having a bad day," Exelby says mockingly when they're in the dressing room. He smacks Kari's head as he walks by and it takes every ounce of willpower that Kari possesses not to turn and cold clock him. He leaves the arena in a huff and goes to his family's hotel to bitch with his brothers for hours before dinner. They're interested in drinking American whiskey and Kari joins them until his guilt takes over. What if Johan is hurt and the team needs him to play tomorrow? The idea of Johan being hurt makes him want to shrivel up with shame. He slinks back to the hallway that leads to the toilets and an old pay phone and calls Johan on his mobile.  
  
"You woke me," Johan says when he answers.  
  
"I want to come there and sleep with you," Kari says, leaning against the wall and thinking of the first time that Johan kissed him. He needs Johan inside him, needs to be braced by what Johan showed him sex could be.  
  
"You sound drunk," Johan says.  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"Where are you?"  
  
"Not with you. Please, Johan."  
  
"My family is here. Go home, Kari." He sounds so disappointed. Kari wants to beat his head against the wall. The playoffs have screwed him up, made him overly dramatic and childish. He wants to explain this to Johan but he won't have the right words, not after three whiskeys. Johan hangs up on him and when Kari returns to his brothers they ask him what's wrong.  
  
"My girlfriend," Kari mutters in way of explanation, tossing his mobile onto the table.  
  
"Your girlfriend?" Kari's oldest brother says in disbelief. "You mean that Swede you brought to dinner the other night?"  
  
Kari's brothers laugh while he scowls, and one of them puts another whiskey in front of him.  
  
The second game is another loss. Kari watches from the bench, hungover and heart sick. Johan takes the loss hard from start to finish, saying nothing when he comes to the bench for his towel during time outs. Kari stares at him but Johan won't look back. In the dressing room afterward the press is crowded around Johan, and Kari watches from afar until they disperse. He sits beside Johan while he's lacing up his shoes.  
  
" _Jo-Jo_ ," Kari says quietly, mumbling. "Don't hate me."  
  
Johan finishes tying his shoes, saying nothing and not looking up. The first slow drag of real terror moves through Kari's stomach: was it really that simple, that fragile, and has he already ruined things? When Johan finally looks at him he doesn't look angry, only tired and worn down.  
  
"Sometimes I think I want you to grow up, _Kärppä_ ," Johan says. "But then where would we be?"  
  
He touches Kari's chin, gets up and walks out of the dressing room with his bag over his shoulder. Kari follows him like a trained dog, but Johan's mother and brother are in the family lounge, and Kari's parents have arrived as well. They are forced into conversations with their families, who pat them and tell them it's not over yet. Kari watches from across the room as Johan holds the door for his mother. They'll fly to New York in two days, and though their families will come with them, they'll have hotel rooms of their own. Kari will dream of Johan's bed until he's in it.  
  
At practice the following morning, Kari arrives early and Johan is already on the ice with a few others, doing his warm ups. Kari skates out toward him and lingers until Johan sighs and leans against Kari's back, just for a moment, a friendly gesture like any between teammates.  
  
"You'll be relieved to know that you're starting the third game," Johan says.  
  
"I don't care," Kari says, though they both know that's a lie. " _Jo-Jo_ , will you come on a trip with me after the season? My brothers are driving me crazy, they want to stay awake until three o'clock every morning and they think everything on TV here is funny, even commercials. Especially commercials. I want to be alone with you for weeks."  
  
Johan just skates away, smiling back at Kari over his shoulder. It's enough to lift Kari through the roof of the arena.  
  
They fly to New York the following morning. Kari's brothers have never been, and they're talking about all the clubs where they hope to party as Kari drives them to the airport, where Kari will board the team charter while his family takes a commercial flight. Kari's heart is already pounding at the thought of the playoff atmosphere in New York, and his nightmares have been bad. He needs so badly to sleep with Johan again, so that when he wakes from dreams of a faceless team of giants pouncing on him after a loss he can curl against Johan and remember that he's safe now.  
  
Once the team has been installed at the Waldorf in New York, Kari takes his family for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, which his brothers apparently didn't get enough of in Atlanta. He enviously watches them putting away drink after drink as their mother scolds them and their father joins in, and wonders if they haven't ended up happier than him, without the pressure of things like playoffs.  
  
"You'll do well," his mother tells him when they say goodnight in the hotel lobby. Kari smiles and pretends to be comforted by this. She pinches his cheek, not fooled.  
  
"What's wrong, _kulta pieni_?" she asks. She still calls him _little_ as if he's looking up at her from the floor, not towering over her, a full foot taller.  
  
"Nothing," Kari says. "Why didn't you want me to play hockey, _äiti_?" he asks, though he knows it's much too late to care. “When I was a boy?”  
  
"Oh, I was silly. I wanted a son I could keep at my side, not another who would run away. But all sons run away, and you were made for this, Kari, look at you. Don't be afraid."  
  
"You won't get your feelings hurt when they shout things at me tomorrow, will you?" Kari asks, and she laughs.  
  
"Who will shout things?"  
  
"The fans in New York, the crowd."  
  
"I'm sure the parents in Finland said worse at the games I went to when you were a boy. Stop fretting. Go up and visit your friend." She winks and Kari stuffs down an embarrassed groan. Obviously he is transparent, at least among his family.  
  
When he knocks on Johan's door Johan answers with a freshly shaven face and a bit of shaving cream still at the corner of his jaw. Kari reaches out and brushes it away with his fingers as Johan stands there looking perplexed.  
  
"Can I sleep here?" Kari asks, and Johan smiles slowly. He pulls Kari inside and into his arms, squeezing him close as the heavy door falls shut. Kari bends down to sigh against Johan's neck. Just the smell of his skin mixed with the shaving cream cures Kari of everything.  
  
They have every kind of sex imaginable, the almost-week without it and the nervous world of the playoffs having wound them up so tight. Kari bends himself over the bed, wanting to be fucked hard: that doesn't last long. Johan holds him until they're both hard again, and they have a maddeningly slow go of it, Johan's face so bright with exertion by the end that Kari comes just from touching his burning cheek. They watch late night TV and eat cashews out of the mini-fridge, then have a sleepy spooning fuck that gives them both a second wind, Kari climbing up from the mattress to perch himself in Johan's lap, grinding down onto Johan's cock to match his hard upward thrusts, both of them grunting like animals until they're laughing at themselves and each other.  
  
"Trying to injure me so you can start tomorrow?" Kari asks when they're beyond done, the air in the room muggy and both of them sheened with sweat.  
  
"Of course," Johan says, stroking Kari's face. "You've uncovered my plan."  
  
"I knew it," Kari says, speaking into Johan's mouth as they lean together to kiss, both of them sore from their lips to their heels. Kari falls asleep like a switch has been thrown, dreaming of nothing but the blanket world where he floats with Johan until morning.  
  
During the apocalyptic loss that follows, he thinks about this night with Johan, and the season with the _Jokerit_ that made his reputation and ensured his American fortune. He was so unhappy then, and so determined not to think about what had happened to him, that he made the game everything. He's never worked harder in his life. As the puck skates by him as if it's invisible, into the net for five, six, seven goals, he wonders what he's done, what he's cost himself, by allowing himself such happiness with Johan.  
  
In the dressing room after the game, no one comes near him. Even Johan keeps his distance, and Kari overhears his muttered conversation with Hartley: of course Johan will start the fourth and possibly final game. Poor _Kärppä_ is just not capable of handling the pressure. Even the press stays away from Kari, who feels like he's been erased, murdered, as if he's a ghost on the earth now. He remembers too late why this game means so much to him, why it matters to win or lose.  
  
He tells his family to go out without him, and they reluctantly agree, his brothers eerily quiet as they wish him goodnight before leaving his hotel room. Kari sits on the end of his bed and listens to the hum of the empty room, waiting for Johan to arrive. He's not sure what he'll do when he does.  
  
When the knock on his door comes, Kari gets up slowly and sighs, admitting to himself that, whatever the complications, he just wants to crawl into Johan's arms and hide himself there until morning.  
  
He pulls open the door to find not Johan but Ilya. He's solemn and studying Kari with sympathy, his hair still wet from the post-game shower.  
  
"Are you okay?" Ilya asks. "Bobby said you sent your family away."  
  
"Yes," Kari says, surprised by the extremity of his annoyance with this gesture. "I'm fine."  
  
"We all lost," Ilya says. "Not just you."  
  
"I know that."  
  
"Do you need some company?"  
  
Kari shakes his head. The last thing he needs is pity from Ilya and Holik. Ilya pats Kari's shoulder before leaving, and Kari returns to slump onto his bed, wondering why Johan hasn't come. Maybe he's upset with Kari for his poor performance, or feeling guilty about the way they spent the night before. Kari moans unhappily and shuts his eyes. Soon he's asleep, drifting through bits and pieces of dreams until he lands within the nightmare. He's backed against a wall and the dressing room is full of shadowy players in their full equipment who are ready to punish him for what he's done. He tries to shout for help, to shout Johan's name, but his voice won't work. He can hear Johan screaming his name, trying to help him, but he's so far away, and the others are like a wall around Kari, pinning him down and laughing.  
  
He wakes up with a shout and rolls off the side of the bed. Someone is pounding on the door, and Kari's heart is hammering, the sound of the knocking like gun shots. He crawls toward the door and gets to his feet, shaking and not trusting the transition from the dream to the real world. He looks through the peep hole and actually whimpers in relief when he sees Johan standing outside.  
  
"I was shouting for you, didn't you hear me?" Johan asks as he walks inside, his eyes wide with worry. Kari nods and falls against him.  
  
"I did hear you," he says, and then he bursts into the tears he's been holding back for six years.  
  
Johan shushes him and brings him to the bed, where Kari dissolves against him, crying until the sleeve on Johan's shirt is soaked through. Johan tells him it's alright, it's okay, no one is angry with him. Kari knows that isn't true, but he's not crying about the game.  
  
"I'm glad it's you tomorrow," Kari says, wiping at his face with shaking hands.  
  
"Me, too," Johan says, watching him with concern. He speaks as if he'll be taking a bullet for Kari, and they both know that he will. The Rangers are simply a better team.  
  
They turn onto their sides and stare at the television for awhile, Johan wrapped around Kari and kissing his ear, the back of his neck. Kari sniffles pathetically and holds one of Johan's hands in his. Whatever happens, and whatever happened before, he has Johan now, and that's all that matters, really. He crawls out of Johan's arms after awhile and goes to the mini fridge to get a drink.  
  
"Have one with me," he says, holding up a little bottle of vodka. Johan laughs.  
  
"I don't think so," he says.  
  
"Come on, please? Just a beer? Or, here, red wine. That's healthy, right?"  
  
Johan snorts and sits up on the bed. Kari brings him the little bottle of wine, not enough to get him anywhere near drunk. He cracks open the bottle of vodka for himself and has a drink. To his surprise, Johan actually opens the wine and drinks.  
  
"To the summer," Kari says, kneeling on the bed to tap his bottle against Johan's. Johan shakes his head, toasts and drinks again. Kari waits to hear a lecture on how he's giving up already.  
  
"I once told a girl I would drink wine on my wedding night," Johan says instead. He stares at Kari as if Kari should know what this means.  
  
"Is this our wedding night?" Kari asks, and he starts to laugh, but it dies out. Johan looks so calm and certain, as if Kari's crying was not a mystery to him, as if he knows everything somehow.  
  
"You asked me if I'd take a trip with you," Johan says. "Kari, please understand. I would go anywhere with you. Anywhere, for as long as you like."  
  
"Okay," Kari sits beside him on the bed. He's going to make a joke, pretend to accept Johan's marriage proposal, but then it doesn't seem like a joke at all. He kisses Johan's forehead and takes a long drink of vodka.  
  
"Look at you," Johan says, touching Kari's cheek, which is still hot and soft from his crying. "You're so tired, yeah?"  
  
Kari nods drowsily and falls onto Johan, who laughs and tucks him into his arms. The whole hotel is quiet, and the buzz from the arena that lingers in Kari's ears begins to fade, the jeers of screaming fans melting into the hum from the vent as heat pumps into the room. Johan sighs against Kari's hair, petting him to sleep while Kari still clutches half a bottle of mini-bar vodka.  
  
"You know I had a dream that I went back in time and comforted you like this, when you were a boy, when you were upset," Johan says, scratching his fingers through Kari's hair and then down the back of his neck.  
  
"You did," Kari mumbles sleepily, drooling onto Johan's shirt. "You did do that."  
  
"Oh, so it wasn't only a dream?"  
  
"Never leave me," Kari says, begging openly, and Johan laughs, but there's only kindness in it, because it's clear, even when Kari is so close to sleep, that he's only laughing at the idea that he ever would.  
  
*  
  
The Thrashers are swept out of their first ever playoff appearance in four games. Johan starts the fourth game, and he can't shake the feeling that it's not real, that it's some sort of meaningless practice exercise, even with the whole Garden vibrating with the noise of the New York fans. He starts to get nervous in the second, wondering what's missing, what's happened to him. He used to experience every game with such horrible gravity, like the force of a loss would blow him off the earth, and the goals scored on him sliced him to pieces. He was always looking for his own blood on the ice. Maybe he's simply overtired. Maybe he shouldn't be fooling around with Kari during the season, or at least not during the playoffs. They could be chaste with each other during times like this, and then celebrate the end of the season with weeks spent in bed. He tries to imagine Kari attempting to concentrate on tending goal while he's full of longing and he knows that it would be a complete disaster. For some reason the thought makes him smile behind his mask.  
  
When the game and the series are finally and officially lost, the Thrashers trail back to the dressing room in single file shame, the New York fans sending them off with parting taunts. Johan can see Kari walking up ahead, his head bent toward the ground. Even the beat reporters keep their distance while the players undress, nobody saying much of anything. Hartley disappears without a word, the worst sort of chastisement he could have offered. Johan goes to sit beside Kari, and when Kari bends down to help him untie his skates Johan's eyes fill up with some combination of loss and embarrassment and extreme joy. He knows then why the game didn't feel real. He's lost that dark, massive thing that used to swell up inside him and threaten to come pouring out, that anger at the unfairness of the world and his ineffectual place within it. It was the reason he made himself learn how to tend goal when he was thirteen, and the reason he was good at it for so long, out of angry determination. Now he'll have to learn how to play well for a different reason: so that he can stay here, beside Kari, who makes the world and everything in it feel preciously just.  
  
"Fuck!" Ilya shouts as they pick up their bags and head out of the cramped visitors' dressing room. "Get me the fuck out of New York."  
  
Everyone grumbles in agreement, and this seems to lift the team's spirits a bit, a shared expression of misery amongst the silence. They file through the family lounge, showered briefly by the reassurances of their parents and siblings and wives. Ilya's fiancée is there, holding their daughter, and Johan glances at Kari to see if he's noticed. Kari is standing with his parents and brothers, all of them touching some part of him, his shoulders or his face or his back. He's looking not at Ilya but at the floor as his mother speaks to him in Finnish.  
  
"Well, so much for that," Johan's brother says.  
  
"Hush," his mother snaps. "Johan was magnificent! It's the fault of these others, they didn't score for him, and that young man over there, what was he doing in the goal? Johan should have played every game."  
  
"Careful," Johan says, putting his arm around his mother's shoulders. "Some people here speak your language."  
  
"She's wrong anyway," Emil says. "I think you need a new coach."  
  
All around the room conversations like this are taking place in at least six different languages. Ilya's father is by far the loudest. The traveling secretary mercifully breaks it up after ten minutes, ushering the players toward the door and explaining to their families that they have a plane to catch. Once they're on the bus to the airport, silence descends again, but this time it's nice. Johan sits beside Kari, their elbows touching on the armrest between their seats.  
  
"God," Kari moans, his face all petulance and misery. "I'm starving."  
  
Johan wants to pull him into his lap, but he only bumps his shoulder against Kari's. Kari looks over at him expectantly.  
  
"Don't worry," Johan says. "You'll win the cup someday, when I'm retired and watching from home."  
  
"Don't be stupid," Kari says. He smiles. "You can wait for me in the family lounge while I win it."  
  
Johan shakes his head and Kari leans closer, pushing their shoulders snugly together. Outside, it's raining in ugly sheets of black down the bus windows, and Johan can't wait to leave this city and go home to the one that has begun to feel like his own since he found Kari within it. Kari's every sigh and twitch feels significant, as if they have come to the other side of some incredibly daunting trial and, though they failed to do what they meant to, they have survived. Johan feels like he's been given a second chance to live, as if he's escaped his execution.  
  
He sleeps on the plane for the first time in his life that night, and when he wakes just before landing Kari is asleep beside him with a blanket pulled up to his chin. The whole plane is quiet, but there is a roaring sort of force to it, as if there is sleeping gas pumping into the air, keeping everyone under. Johan shuts his eyes again and tips his head against the top of Kari's.  
  
They land well after midnight and sit in the lounge like zombies until their families' flights arrive from New York. Escalators, baggage claim, coffee for Johan's brother: Johan is in a daze throughout the whole process, and it's not an unpleasant feeling. His mother and brother are ready to go before Kari's family have found their bags, so Johan begins hugging teammates goodbye, muttering things about next season, and vague plans for get-togethers during the summer that probably won't happen. He comes to Kari last and smiles at him. Kari looks miserably exhausted, his whole face puffy with it.  
  
"I'll see you soon, _Kärppä_ ," he says, pulling Kari into his arms. Kari slumps there for just a moment before sighing, straightening up and stepping back. It hurts to turn for the taxi stand and leave him in the airport like that, and Johan wishes he could bring Kari home along with his mother and brother, wish them goodnight and crawl into his bed beside Kari, wrap around him and sleep for a week. He thinks of it all the way home, falls asleep against the window of the taxi and wakes up not knowing where he is.  
  
"I don't think I've ever seen your brother so tired!" his mother says to Emil, turning from the front seat, where she's been attempting to chat with the driver with what little English they have between them.  
  
Johan's mother and brother stay for another two days: his mother wants to see the Coca Cola museum, and his brother wants to go to bars and try to pick up American women. Johan gets text messages from Kari: _sabres beat islanders_ , _mclennan jus slashed franzen_ , and _look @ tis funny video i found of you_. It's the first time Johan has ever received text messages from anyone, and he thinks of Kari tapping at that little keyboard on his fancy mobile, slumped on the sofa at his apartment, his brothers roaring with laughter at television commercials. He aches for the sight of him more than he'd expected to after only two days apart.  
  
When both of their families have been seen off, everyone asking why Kari and Johan don't want to return with them straightaway instead of visiting later in the summer, Kari comes to Johan's apartment and pours himself around Johan as soon as he pulls open the door.  
  
" _Jo-Jo_ ," he moans happily against Johan's neck. "I was afraid you'd gone back to Sweden."  
  
"I wouldn't leave without telling you," Johan says. He wraps his arms around Kari and breathes in the smell of him: ridiculously expensive hair gel and something like a fast food milkshake.  
  
"I knew that, maybe," Kari says. He pulls back to smile at Johan shakily, and kisses the side of his nose. "But you didn't answer any of my texts."  
  
"I couldn't! I don't have a keyboard on my mobile!"  
  
"You don't need a keyboard, you can use the numbers."  
  
"What? Oh, never mind, I'll never be able to do it. I liked your messages, anyway."  
  
Kari smiles as if he needed very much to hear this. He kisses Johan, licking his lips apart, and Johan groans with bone-melting satisfaction when his mouth is finally on Kari's. He's so warm and tastes so good, and Johan is already hard for him, already backing toward the couch while Kari holds his face between his hands. He loves everything about Kari, and he wonders if it's like this for everyone who finds the person who makes them realize that they've done nothing but search for this person all their life. Every time his mobile beeped with a new message from Kari he had fumbled the thing from his pocket crazily, breathing fast and smiling stupidly down at the little screen, reading every pointless little message as _I love you: because the Sabres won, because McLennan slashed Franzen, because there are embarrassing old videos of you on the internet_. It's the way the world had become for Johan: he loves Kari more and more without needing any new reasons. He loves Kari because the sun comes up every day.  
  
They have sex with the playoff game that Johan had been watching muted on television. Kari is trembly and sweating, feverish with need and pulling Johan deeper into him, his hands on the small of Johan's back. He whispers things into Johan's mouth, mostly in Finnish, and Johan doesn't ask him to translate, just reaches between them to stroke Kari's cock until all he's saying is _God, fuck, yeah_ , back to English. Kari comes with a wrenched-out scream, and his whole body pulses around Johan's cock, bringing Johan to a climax that almost hurts, sharp and hard and so good. He pumps everything he has into Kari, who shudders beneath him and hums _mhmmm_ like Johan is giving him exactly what he needs.  
  
For a long time afterward they kiss lazily, one or both of them occasionally glancing at the game. It doesn't really matter who wins. Kari shows Johan how to write text messages on his mobile and Johan pretends to pay attention, beginning to drift to sleep with his head on Kari's shoulder. The warmth of the sunlight through the sliding glass doors feels like a blessing, falling across them and making Kari's skin seem to glow.  
  
"See now," Kari says, pressing the tiny buttons rapidly, fifteen clicks just to spell out Johan's name. "Now you can send me secret messages when we're apart."  
  
"I haven't got any secrets anymore," Johan says. "Not from you."  
  
"I have one," Kari says after a pause, the clicking stilled. Johan wakes up a bit, cracking his eyes open.  
  
"Yeah?" Johan says, not sure he wants to know. Kari looks nervous, then he turns to Johan and kisses him sharply between the eyes.  
  
"I didn't really care when we lost the last game," Kari says, sheepishly and as if this is very grave indeed. "Am I ruined for hockey?"  
  
"No," Johan says, relieved. "You just know when something is a lost cause, maybe."  
  
"But we'll be better next year," Kari says, tucking his arm around Johan's back. "I want to go back to the playoffs. I want to – show that I can do it."  
  
"Okay," Johan says, as if it's in his power to consent to this and grant it. He shuts his eyes and yawns against Kari's skin. Something in him knows that the playoffs won't really happen next season, but it's possible, of course. In the moment he can't yet imagine the season that will follow the one that just ended. He can hardly envision leaving the sofa to eat something for lunch. With Kari in his arms, time feels meaningless, the past and the future only vague and annoying, not important. Kari makes every moment of Johan's life the only thing that has ever mattered, and if he ever figures out how to thank Kari for this, he will. Until then he can only offer the paltry compensation of his company and be grateful that Kari is willing to receive it.  
  
"What would you do if you won the cup?" Kari asks, and Johan knows his eyes are on the television screen, watching people who have bested them battle across the ice like their lives depend upon it.  
  
"This is what I would do," Johan says. "Exactly what we're doing now."  
  
Kari laughs and buries his face in Johan's hair. Johan hopes that he knows that this is true.  
  
"Me too," Kari says, scratching his fingers down Johan's back, and Johan falls easily into a dream about sleeping on his sofa with Kari, trophies stacked all over the room, gold and silver shining from every corner, a beautiful but worthless currency that he and Kari take for granted as they sleep among the cups and towers and medals that line the room like ghosts that cannot touch them now, not anymore.


End file.
